It's a research journal, composed entirely of 'brief ideas' that DO NOT WORK. The goal here is to provide a place for short ideas to be described (in 200 words or less), for these ideas to be archived (courtesy of Zenodo), searchable and citable, and to provide a way to explain why others shouldn't follow you down that particular path.
It's a work in progress by @chrislintott, based on the Journal of Brief Ideas, which you can see in its current form http://ideas.theoj.org, built by @arfon, @larshankat, @physicsdavid and @stuart_lynn
Much of this text is stolen from them too.
I agree with the Brief Ideas thing that that there is an inherent inefficiency in scientific publishing due to the quantum (or minimum publishable amount) of research being too large. They're solving that problem for what we might choose to call ideas worth sharing. This place is for the other ideas - for the ideas that had you grinning to yourself, haranguing your collaborators or running to your laptop, but which sooner or later became obviously not worth trying.
Ideas generate ideas. Bad ideas, or ideas whose time has not yet come, can spark good and timely ideas. And by sharing you might stop others wandering down the same sad wrong path as you, or (miracle of miracles) get someone to tell you thought was a block is not.
You're reading the FAQ for something called 'The Journal of Terrible Ideas' and you think this is a sensible question?
Ha.I suppose if one of your peers thinks your idea is not terrible than this way you will at least get credit.
Brief writing encourages focus, and encourages liberal submission to the journal.
This is very much a work in progress. Milestone tracking coming shortly.
Hopefully/probably? You can keep an eye on Travis stuff here:
